I was too busy photographing cute cats to take a picture; will do when I complete the pair.

Spent another two hours weeding our little garden patch this evening -- this makes day FIVE of digging out copious dandelions, deeply-rooted crabgrass, and various other volunteers in the hopes of making room for eggplant, pickling cucumbers, and the infamous hot chilis we grew last year. I was thrilled to see the tiny rosebushes have roused themselves from winter sleep, though, as did the clematis.

Since I spent 14 years with nothing but a fire escape to grow things on (and nary a houseplant to my name), the garden remains a source of mystery and continual surprise to me. I once killed a cactus, so anything that grows (on purpose, I mean) seems miraculous.

This spring is a bounty of little baby things...not only Isis, at 6 weeks of age, but my week-old chicks (see pic, previous post), plus one of the hens is incubating a half dozen eggs. (However, she did get off the nest for a snack one day and I found her sitting in the wrong nesting box later, the eggs all gone cold. So we'll have to see about that...) Not to mention that Lacey, the llama we are getting this summer, is finally definitely pregnant, due to deliver in the fall. Here she is:

Even the row of asparagus producing about A POUND of fresh shoots daily. How is that even possible? It's like something out of an X-Files alien greenhouse. I pick it all one day, and the next there are 12-inch high stalks again. Weird!

Our two llamas are going to be sheared this Saturday -- now that the days are hitting 70 degrees, they'll be happy without their thick winter coats, and I'll have new fleece to play with. We didn't take pictures last year, but this year I've drafted spouse to photograph the event, so stay tuned for before and after pics of the boys. (They look quite dapper with their new summer dos!)

slithy toves

mimsy borogroves

"One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it--it was the black kitten's fault entirely." (L. Carroll, Through the Looking Glass)
I'm Yankee-Born and Southern-Raised, which makes me kind of Southern Gothic (in the old literary sense of the word). After 15 years in the Big Apple, I spent 4 years on a farm in Michigan raising chickens and llamas and learning to spin, knit, and needle-felt. Now I'm back home in NYC with my much-beloved spouse and one crazy tortiseshell cat. You can also find me on Ravelry.com as okitten.